Saturday, October 04, 2008

This was fun. I was riding home last night and I saw a chicken in the street. I've seen it before, but I thought I'd stop to get a photo. By the time I got stopped, the chicken had vanished somewhere.

By the time I got moving again, a guy on a moped passed me. I got back on the bike and found out the moped was barely going 20 MPH. A few other cars had passed, and I figured I'd try to catch up just to see if I could. By the time I started climbing the hill west of Roe, he was long gone.

About a mile later, just past Lamar, I encountered him again, idling on the sidewalk. It would die if he tried to throttle it, and he was trying to figure it out.

I offered to help, as I'm quite handy with almost anything mechanical. Upon inspection, I saw a lot of air in the fuel filter and bubbles coming from the fuel line into the filter. The fuel line was resting on part of the engine: A classic case of vapor lock, a condition where the fuel is heated in the fuel delivery system enough to boil, causing a bubble or bubbles that block the flow of fuel. He'll eventually have to move the fuel line, but the best thing to do is to let the whole thing cool down while tapping the line to get the bubbles out. He got back on the road in a few minutes.

It was 2600 night at The Maul again. Among other things, I demonstrated the Balancing Hack using my MacBook as collateral, ha ha. I've done this with almost every can of soda I've ever consumed. It always freaks people out.

After that, my friends and I ate some light snacks at Applebee's and I took something home for my wife (who's finally out of the hospital).

Oh, and this morning, I made a quick grocery run for the next few days' worth of food. We didn't have enough eggs for breakfast, so it was nice to have a short, chilly ride this morning. It made me feel like I earned my morning meal to a certain extent.

Bonus: Kitties watching the chipmunks gather stuff for the winter.

Of particular and interesting note: I never once left the 2-mile radius of my home for these trips. My commute might be longer than some would choose to use a bicycle for, but there are so many places that people choose to drive to around here that are quite accessible by bike. If you don't need to carry much (or anything at all), the bike makes a lot of sense.

2 comments:

I've never broken an egg on my bike, and I probably get a dozen every week or two. I've never even ended up with a broken yolk before. I almost always strap them down with the webbing on the top of my panniers as shown. This might give them a little extra shock absorption. Back when I was using the Banjo Bros. panniers, the eggs would go inside the bag with everything else. Eggs are pretty resilient in those cartons. I think a mile-long bike ride to my place from the store is probably pretty tame compared to what they probably go through on freight trains and in cargo trucks.

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